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Centennial Oration, 



Boston, 4 July, 1876. 



BY 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 




Oration 



ON THE 



Centennial Anniversary 



J^cclaratton of SintJcpcuDencc, 

Delivered in the Music Hall, at the Request of 
THE City Government, 

Boston, 4 July, 1876. 



BY 



ROBERT cr WINTHROP. ^w^-\^^^ 



BOSTON: 

PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. 

1876. 

T 






n 



ORATION. 



Again and again, Mr. Mayor and Fellow Citizens, in years 
gone by, considerations or circumstances of some sort, public or 
private, — I know not what, — have prevented my acceptance 
of most kind and flattering invitations to deliver the Oration in 
this my native city on the Fourth of July. On one of those oc- 
casions, long, long ago, I am said to have playfully replied to the 
]\Iayor of that period, that, if I lived to witness this Centennial 
Anniversary, I would not refuse any service which might be 
required of me. That pledge has been recalled by others, if 
not remembered by myself, and by the grace of God I am here 
to-day to fulfil it. I. have come at last, in obedience to your 
call, to add my name to the distinguished roll of those who 
have discharged this service in unbroken succession since the 
year 1783, when the date of a glorious act of patriots was sub- 
stituted for that of a dastardly deed of hirelings, — the 4th of 
July for the 5th of March, — as a day of annual celebration by 
the people of Boston. 

In rising to redeem the promise thus inconsiderately given, I 
may' be pardoned for not forgetting, at the outset, who presided 
over the Executive Council of Massachusetts when the Decla- 
ration, which has just been read, was first formally and solemnly 
proclaimed to the people, from the balcony of yonder Old State 
House, on the 18th of July, 177G ; * and whose privilege it was, 

* James Bowdoin. 



amid the shoutings of the assembled multitude, the ringing of 
the bells, the salutes of the surrounding forts, and the firing 
of thirteen volleys from thirteen successive divisions of the 
Continental regiments, drawji up " in correspondence with the 
number of the American States United," to invoke " Stability 
and Perpetuity to American Independence ! God save our 
American States ! " 

That invocation was not in vain. That wish, that prayer, 
has been graciously granted. We are here this day to thank 
God for it. We do thank God for it with all our hearts, and 
ascribe to Him all the glory. And it would be unnatural if I 
did not feel a more than common satisfaction, that the privilege 
of giving expression to your emotions of joy and gratitude, 
at this hour, should have been assigned to the oldest living de- 
scendant of him by whom that invocation was uttered, and that 
prayer breathed up to Heaven. 

And if, indeed, in addition to this, — as you, Mr. Mayor, so 
kindly urged in originally inviting me, — the name I bear 
may serve in any sort as a link between the earliest settlement 
of New England, two centuries and a half ago, and the grand 
culmination of that settlement in this Centennial Epoch of 
American Independence, all the less may I be at liberty to ex- 
press any thing of the compunction or regret, which I cannot 
but sincerely feel, that so responsible and difficult a task had 
not been imposed upon some more sufficient, or certainly upon 
some younger, man. 

Yet what can I say ? What can any one say, here or else- 
where, to-day, which shall either satisfy the expectations of 
others, or meet his own sense of the demands of such an occa- 
sion ? For myself, certainly, the longer I have contemplated 
it, — the more deeply I have reflected on it, — so much the more 
hopeless I have become of finding myself aljle to give any ade- 
quate expression to its full significance, its real sublimity and 
grandeur. A hundred-fold more than when John Adams wrote 
to his wife it would be so for ever, it is an occasion for "shows, 
games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one 
end of the continent to the other." Ovations, rather than ora- 
tions, are the order of such a day as this. Emotions like those 



which ought to fill, and which do fill, all our hearts, call for the 
SAvelling tones of a multitude, the cheers of a mighty crowd, 
and refuse to be uttered by any single human voice. The 
strongest phrases seem feeble and powerless ; the best results 
of historical research have the dryness of chaff and husks, and 
the richest flowers of rhetoric the drowsiness of "poppy or 
mandragora," in presence of the simplest statement of the 
grand consummation we are here to celebrate : — A Century of 
Self-Government Completed ! A hundred years of Free Re- 
publican Institutions realized and rounded out ! An era of 
Popular Liberty, continued and prolonged from generation to 
generation, until to-day it assumes its full proportions, and as- 
serts its rightful place, among the Ages ! 

It is a theme from which an Everett, a Choate, or even a 
Webster, might have shrunk. But those voices, alas ! were 
long ago hushed. It is a theme on which any one, living or 
dead, might have been glad to follow the precedent of those few 
incomparable sentences at Gettysburg, on the 19th of November, 
1863, and forbear from all attempt at extended discourse. It is 
not for me, however, to copy that unique original, — nor yet to 
shelter myself under an example, which I should in vain 
aspire to equal. 

And, indeed. Fellow Citizens, some formal words must be 
spoken here to-day, — trite, familiar, commonplace words, 
though they may be ; — some words of commemoration ; some 
Avords of congratulation ; some words of glory to God, and of 
acknowledgment to man ; some grateful lockings back ; some 
hopeful, trustful, lookings forward, — these, I am sensible, can- 
not be spared from our great assembly on this Centennial Day. 
You would not pardon me for omitting them. 

But where shall I begin? To wdiat specific subject shall I 
turn for refuge from the thousand thoughts which come crowd- 
ing to one's mind and rushing to one's Yips, all jealous of post- 
ponement, all clamoring for utterance before our Festival shall 
close, and before this Centennial sun shall set ? 

The single, simple Act which has made the Fourth of July 
memorable for ever, — the mere scene of the Declaration, — would 
of itself and alone supply an ample subject for far more than 



6 

the little hour which I may dare to occupy ; and, though it has 
been described a hundred times before, in histories and addresses, 
and in countless magazines and journals, it imperatively demands 
something more than a cursory allusion here to-day, and chal- 
lenges our attention as it never did before, and hardly ever can 
challenge it again. 

Go back with me, then, for a few moments at least, to that 
great year of our Lord, and that great day of American Liberty. 
Transport yourselves with me, in imagination, to Philadelphia. 
It will require but little effort for any of us to do so, for all our 
hearts are there already. Yes, we are all there, — from the Atlantic 
to the Pacific, from the Lakes to the Gulf, — we are all there, at 
this high noon of our Nation's birthday, in that beautiful City of 
Brotherly Love, rejoicing in all her brilliant displays, and partaking 
in the full enjoyment of all her j^ageantry and pride. Certainly, 
the birthplace and the burial-place of Franklin are in cordial 
sympathy at this hour; and a common sentiment of congratula- 
tion and joy, leaping and vibrating from heart to heart, outstrips 
even the magic swiftness of magnetic wires. There are no 
chords of such elastic reach and such electric power as the 
heartstrings of a mighty Nation, touched and tuned, as all our 
heartstrings are to-day, to the sense of a common glory, — 
throbbing and tlnilling with a common exultation. 

Go with me, then, I say, to Philadelphia; — not to Philadel- 
phia, indeed, as she is at this moment, with all her bravery on, 
with all her beautiful garments around her, with all the graceful 
and generous contributions which, so many other Cities and 
other States and other Nations have sent for her adornment, — 
not forgetting those most graceful, most welcome, most touching 
contributions, in view of the precise character of the occasion, 
from Old England lierself ; — but go with me to Philadelphia, as 
she was jast a hundred years ago. Enter with me her noble 
Independence Hall, so happily restored and consecrated afj-esh 
as the Runn3anede of our Nation ; and, as we enter it, let us not 
forget to be grateful that no demands of public convenience or 
expediency have called for the demolition of that old State 
House of Pennsylvania. Observe and watch the movements, 
listen attentively to the words, look steadfastly at the counte- 



nances, of the men who compose the little Congress assembled 
there. Braver, wiser, nobler men have never been gathered 
and grouped under a single roof, before or since, in any age, on 
any soil beneath the sun. What are they doing ? What are 
they daring? Who are they, thus to do, and thus to dare? 

Single out with me, as you easily will at the first glance, by a 
presence and a stature not easily overlooked or mistaken, the 
young, ardent, accomplished Jefferson. He is only just thirty- 
three years of age. Charming in conversation, ready and full 
in counsel, he is "slow of tongue," like the great Lawgiver of 
the Israelites, for any public discussion or formal discourse. 
But he has brought with him the reputation of wielding what 
John Adams Avell called " a masterly pen." And grandly has 
lie justified that reputation. Grandly has he Employed that pen 
already, in drafting a Paper which is at this moment lying on 
the table, and awaiting its final signature and sanction. 

Three weeks before, indeed, — on the previous 7th of June, 
— his own noble colleague, Richard Henry Lee, had moved the 
Ivesolution, whose adoption, on the 2d of July, had virtually 
settled the whole (question. Nothing, certainly, more explicit or 
emphatic could have been wanted for that Congress itself than 
that Resolution, setting forth as it did, in language of striking- 
simplicity and l)revity and dignity, " That these United Colonies 
are, and, of right, ought to be. Free and Independent States ; 
that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, 
and that all political connection between them and the State of 
Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved." 

That Resolution was, indeed, not only comprehensive and 
conclusive enough for the Congress which adopted it, but, I need 
not say, it is comprehensive and conclusive enough for us ; and 
I heartily wish, that, in the century to come, its reading might 
be substituted for that of the longer Declaration which has 
put the patience of our audiences to so severe a test for so many 
j-ears past, — though, happily, not to-day. 

But the form in which that Resolution was to be announced 
and proclaimed to the people of the Colonies, and the reasons 
by which it was to be justified before the world, were at that 
time of i]itense interest and of momentous importance. No 



graver responsibilit}^ "vvas ever devolved upon a 3'oung man of 
thirty-three, if, indeed, upon any man of any age, than that of 
preparing such a Paper. As often as I have examined the 
original draft of that Paper, still extant in the Archives of the 
State Department at Washington, and have observed how very 
few changes were made, or even suggested, by the illustrious 
men associated with its author on the committee for its prep- 
aration, it has seemed to me to be as marvellous a composition, 
of its kind and for its j^urpose, as the annals of mankind can 
show. The earliest honors of this day, certainly, may well be 
joaid, here and throughout the country, to the young Virginian 
of " the masterly pen." 

And here, by the favor of a highly valued friend and fellow- 
citizen, to whom ii was given by Jefferson himself a few months 
only before his death, I am privileged to hold in my hands, and 
to lift up to the eager gaze of you all, a most compact and con- 
venient little mahogany case, which bears this autograph inscrip- 
tion on its face, dated " Monticello, November 18, 1825 : " — 

" Thomas Jefferson gives this Writing Desk to Joseph Cool- 
idge, Jun"". as a memorial of his affection. It was made from 
a drawing of his own, by Ben Randall, Cabinet-maker of Phila- 
delphia, with whom he first lodged on his arrival in that City in 
]\Iay, 1776, and is the identical one on which he wrote the Dec- 
laration of Independence." 

" Politics, as well as Religion," the inscription proceeds to 
say, " has its superstitions. These, gaining strength with time, 
may, one day, give imaginary value to this relic, for its associa- 
tion with the birth of the Great Charter of our Independence." 

Superstitions ! Imaginary value ! Not for an instant can we 
admit such ideas. The modesty of the writer has betrayed even 
" the masterly pen." There is no imaginary value to this 
relic, and no superstition is required to render it as precious 
and priceless a piece of wood, as the secular cabinets of the 
world have ever possessed, or ever claimed to possess. No cab- 
inet-maker on earth will have a more enduring name than this 
inscription has secured to " Ben Randall, of Philadelphia." No 
pen Avill have a wider or more lasting fame than his who wrote 
the inscription. The very table at Runnymede, which some of 



lis have seen, on wliicli tlie Magna Charta of England is said 
to have been signed or sealed five centnvies and a half before, — 
even were it authenticated by the genuine autographs of. every 
one of those brave old Barons, with Stephen Langton at their 
head, — who extorted its grand pledges and promises from King 
John, — so soon to be violated, — could hardly exceed, could 
hardly equal, in interest and value, this little mahogany desk. 
What momentous issues for our country, and for mankind, were 
locked up in this narrow drawer, as night after night the rough 
notes of preparation for the Great Paper were laid aside for the 
revision of the morning! To. what anxious thoughts, to what 
careful study of words and phrases, to what cautious weighing 
of statements and arguments, to what deep and almost over- 
wlielming impressions of responsibility, it must have been a 
witness I Long may it find its appropriate and appreciating 
ownership in the successive generations of a family, in which 
the blood of Vii-ginia and Massachusetts is so auspiciously com- 
mingled ! Should it, in the lapse of years, ever pass from the 
hands of those to whom it will be so precious an heirloom, it 
could only have its fit and final place among the clioicest and 
most cherished treasures of the Nation, with whose Title Deeds 
of Independence it is so proudly associated ! 

But the young Jefferson is not alone from Virginia, on the day 
we are celebrating, in the Hall which we have entered as imagin- 
ar}" spectators of the scene. His venerated friend and old legal 
preceptor, — George Wythe, — is, indeed, temporarily absent 
from his side; and even Richard Henry Lee, the original mover 
of the measure, and upon whom it might have devolved to draw 
up the Declaration, has been called home by dangerous illness 
in his family, and is not there to help him. But " the gay, 
good-humored " Francis Lightfoot Lee, a younger brother, is 
there. Benjamin Harrison, the father of our late President 
Harrison, is there, and has just reported the Declaration from 
the Committee of the Whole, of which he was Chairman. 
Tiie " mild and philanthropic " Carter Braxton is there, in 
the place of the lamented Peyton Randolph, the first President 
of the Continental Congress, who had died, to the sorrow of the 
whole country, six or seven months before. And the noble- 

2 



10 

hearted Thomas Nelson is there, — the largest subscriber to 
the generous relief sent from Virginia to Boston during the 
sore distress occasioned by the shutting up of our Port, and 
who was the mover of those Instructions in the Convention 
of Virginia, passed on the 15th of May, under which Richard 
Henry Lee offered the original Resolution of Independence, 
on the 7th of June. 

I am particular, Fellow Citizens, in giving to the Old Domin- 
ion the foremost place in this rapid survey of the Fourth of July, 
1776, and in naming every one of her delegates who partici- 
l^ated in that day's doings ; for it is hardly too much to say, that 
the destinies of our country, at that period, hung and hinged 
upon her action, and upon the action of her great and glorious 
sons. Without Virginia, as we must all acknowledge, — with- 
out her Patrick Henry among the people, her Lees and Jeffer- 
son in the forum, and her Washington in the field, — I will not 
say, that the cause of American Liberty and American Indepen- 
dence must have been ultimately defeated, — no, no ; there was 
no ultimate defeat for that cause in the decrees of the Most 
High ! — but it must have been delayed, postponed, perplexed, 
and to many eyes and many hearts rendered seemingl}^ hope- 
less. It was Union which assured our Independence, and there 
could have been no Union without the influence and cooperation 
of that great leading Southern Colony. To-day, then, as we look 
back over the wide gulf of a century, we are ready and glad to 
forget every thing of alienation, ever}' thing of contention and 
estrangement which has intervened, and to hail her once more, 
as our Fathers in Faneuil Hall hailed her, in 1775, as " our 
noble, patriotic sister Colony, Virginia." 

I may not attempt, on this occasion, to speak with equal par- 
ticularity of all the other delegates whom we see assembled in 
that immortal Congress. Their names are all inscribed where 
they can never be obliterated, never be forgotten. Yet some 
others of them so challenge our attention and rivet our gaze, as 
we look in upon that old time-honored Hall, that I cannot pass 
to other topics without a brief allusion to them. 

Who can overlook or mistake the sturdy front of Roger Sher- 
man, whom we are proud to recall as a native of Massachusetts, 



11 

thougli now a delegate from Connecticut, — that " Old Puri- 
tan," as John Adams well said, ''as honest as an angel, and as 
firm in the cause of American Independence as Mount Atlas," 
— represented most worthily to-day by the distinguished Orator 
of the Centennial at Philadelphia, as well as by more than one 
distinguished grandson in our own State ? 

Who can overlook or mistake the stalwart figure of Samuel 
Chase, of Maryland, " of ardent passions, of strong mind, of 
domineering temper, of a turbulent and boisterous life," who 
had helped to burn in eflSgy the Maryland Stamp Distributor 
eleven years before, and who, we are told by one who knew 
Avhat he was saying, " must ever be conspicuous in the cata- 
logue of that Congress " ? 

His milder and more amiable colleague, Charles Carroll, was 
engaged at that moment in pressing the cause of Independence 
on the hesitating Convention of Maryland, at Annapolis ; and 
though, as we shall see, he signed the Declaration on the 2d of 
August, and outlived all his compeers on that roll of glory, he 
is missing from the illustrious band as we look in upon them this 
morning. I cannot but remember that it was my privilege to 
see and know that venerable person in my early manhood. 
Entering his drawing-room, nearly five-and-forty years ago, I 
found him reposing on a sofa and covered with a shawl, and 
was not even aware of his presence, so shrunk and shrivelled by 
the lapse of years was his originally feeble frame. Quot llhras 
in dace summo ! But the little heap on the sofa was soon seen 
stirring, and, rousing himself from his midday nap, he rose and 
greeted me with a courtesy and a grace which I can never for- 
get. In the ninety-fifth year of his age, as he was, and within 
a few months of his death, it is not surprising that there should 
be little for me to recall of that interview, save his eager 
inquiries about James Madison, whom I had just visited at 
Montpelier, and his affectionate allusions to John Adams, who 
had gone before him ; and save, too, the exceeding satisfaction 
for myself of having seen and j^ressed the hand of the last 
surviving signer of the Declaration. 

But Cffisar Rodne}^ who had gone home on the same patri- 
otic errand which had called Carroll to Maryland, had happily 



12 

returned in season, and had come in, two days before, " in his 
boots and spurs," to give the casting vote for Dehiware in favor 
of Independence. 

And there is Arthur Middleton, of South Carolina, the bosom 
friend of our own Hancock, and who is associated with him 
under the same roof in those elegant hospitalities which helped 
t^ make men know and understand and trust each other. And 
with him. you may see and almost hear the eloquent Edward 
Rutledge, who not long before had united with John Adams and 
Richard Henry Lee in urging on the several Colonies the great 
measure of establishing permanent governments at once for 
themselves, — a decisive step which we may not forget that 
South Carolina was among the very earliest in taking. She 
took it, however, with a reservation, and her delegates were 
not quite ready to vote for Independence, when it was first 
proposed. 

But Richard Stockton, of New Jersey, must not be unmarked 
or unmentioned in our rapid survey, more especially as it is mat- 
ter of record that his original doubts about the measure, which 
he is now bravely supporting, had been dissipated and dis- 
pelled "by the irresistible and conclusive arguments of John 
Adams." 

And who requires to be reminded that our " Great Bostonian," 
Benjamin Franklin, is at his post to-day, representing his adopted 
Colony with less support than he could wnsh, — for Pennsylvania, 
as well as New York, was sadly divided, and at times almost 
jiaralyzed by her divisions, — but with patriotism and firmness 
and prudence and sagacity and jihilosophy and wit and common- 
sense and courage enough to constitute a whole delegation, and 
to represent a whole Colony, by himself ! He is the last man of 
that whole glorious group of Fifty, — or it may have been one or 
two more," or one or two less, than fifty, — who requires to be 
pointed out, in order to be the observed of all observers. 

]>ut I must not stop here. It is fit, above all other things, 
that, while Ave do justice to the great actors in this scene from 
other Colonies, we should not overlook the delegates from our 
own Colony. It is fit, above all things, that we should recall 
sometliing more than the names of the men who represented 



13 

Massacliusetts in that great Assembly, and who boldly affixed 
their signatnres, in her behalf, to that immortal Instrument. 

Was there ever a more signal distinction vouchsafed to mortal 
man, than that which was won and worn by John Hancock a 
hundred years ago to-day ? Not altogether a great man ; not 
without some grave defects of character ; — we remember noth- 
ing at this hour save his Presidency of the Congress of the 
Declaration, and his bold and noble signature to our Magna 
Charta. Behold him in the chair which is still standing in 
its old j)lace, — the very same chair in which Washington 
was to sit, eleven years later, as President of the Conven- 
tion which framed the Constitution of the United States ; 
the very same chair, emblazoned on the back of which Franklin 
was to descry " a rising, and not a setting sun," when that 
Constitution had been finally adopted, — behold him, the 3'oung 
Boston merchant, not yet quite forty years of age, not only with 
a princely fortune at stake, but with a price at that moment on 
his own head, sitting there to-day in all the calm composure and 
dignity which so peculiarly characterized him, and which noth- 
ing seemed able to relax or ruffle. He had chanced to come on to 
the Congress during the previous year, just as Peyton Randolph 
had been compelled to relinquish his seat and go home, — 
returning only to die ; and, having been unexpectedly elected 
as his successor, he hesitated about taking the seat. But grand 
old Benjamin Harrison, of Virginia, we are told, was standing 
beside him, and with the ready good humor that loved a joke 
even in the Senate House, he seized the modest candidate in 
his athletic arms, and placed him in the presidential chair ; then, 
turning to some of the members around, he exclaimed : " We 
will show Mother .Britain how little we care- for her, by making 
a Massachusetts man our President, whom she has excluded 
from pardon by a public proclamation." 

Behold him ! He has risen for a moment. He has put the 
question. The Declaration is adopted. It is already late in 
the evening, and all formal promulgation of the day's doings 
must be j^ostponed. After a grace of three days, the air will be 
vibrating with the joyous tones of the Old Bell in the cupola 
over his head, proclaiming Liberty to all mankind, and with the 



14 

responding acclamations of assembled multitudes. Meantime, for 
him, however, a simple -but solemn duty remains to be discharged. 
The Paper is before him. You may see the very table on which 
it was laid, and the very inkstand which awaits his use. No 
hesitation now. He dips his pen, and with an untrembling 
hand proceeds to execute a signature, which wT)uld seem to 
have been studied in the schools, and practised in the counting- 
room, and shaped and modelled day by day in the correspon- 
dence of mercantile and political manhood, until it should be 
meet for the autlientication of some immortal act ; and which, 
as Webster grandly said, has made his name as imperishable, 
" as if it were written between Orion and the Pleiades." 

Under that signature, with only the attestation of a secretary, 
the Declaration goes forth to the American people, to be printed 
in their journals, to be proclaimed in their streets, to be pub- 
lished from their pulpits, to be read at the head of their armies, 
to be incorporated for ever into their history. The British forces, 
driven away from Boston, are now landing on Staten Island, 
and the reverses of Long Island are just awaiting us. The}'- 
were met b}^ the promulgation of this act of offence and defi- 
ance to all royal authority. But there was no individual respon- 
sibility for tliat act, save in the signature of John Hancock, 
President, and Charles Thomson, Secretary. Not until the 2d of 
August was our young Boston merchant relieved from the 
perilous, the appalling grandeur of standing sole sponsor for the 
revolt of Thirteen Colonies and Three Millions of people. Six- 
teen or seventeen yeavs before, as a very young man, he had 
made a visit to London, and was present at the burial of 
George II., and at the coronation of George III. He is now not 
only the witness but the instrument, and in some sort the im- 
personation, of a far more substantial change of dynasty on his 
own soil, the burial of royalty under any and every title, and 
the coronation of a Sovereign, whose sceptre has already 
endured for a century, and wliose sway has already embraced 
three times thirteen States, and more than thirteen times three 
millions of people ! 

Ah, if his quaint, picturesque, charming old mansion-house, 
so long the gem of Beacon Street, could have stood till this day, 



15 

our Centennial decorations and illuminations might haply have 
so marked, and sanctified, and glorified it, that the rage of re- 
construction would have passed over it still longer, and spared 
it for the reverent gaze of other generations. But his own 
name and fame are secure ; and, whatever may liave been the 
foibles or faults of his later years, to-day we will rememl)er that 
momentous and matchless signature, and him who made it, with 
nothing but respect, admiration, and gratitude. 

But Hancock, as I need not remind you, was not the only 
proscribed patriot who represented Massachusetts at Philadel- 
pliia on the day we are commemorating. His associate in Gen- 
eral Gage's memorable exception from pardon is close at his 
side. He who, as a Harvard College student, in 1743, had 
maintained the affirmative of the Thesis, " Whether it be lawful 
to resist the Supreme Magistrate, if the Commonwealth can- 
not otherwise be preserved," and who during those whole three- 
and-thirty years since had been training up himself and training 
up his fellow countrymen in the nurture and admonition of the 
Lord and of Liberty ; — he who had replied to Gage's recom- 
mendation to him to make his, peace with tlie King, " I trust I 
have long since made my peace with the King of kings, and 
no personal considerations shall induce me to abandon the right- 
eous cause of my country ;" — he who had drawn up the Boston 
Instructions to her Representatives in the General Court, 
adojDted at Faneuil Hall, on the 24th of May, 1764, — the earli- 
est protest against the Stamp Act, and one of the grandest 
papers of our whole Revolutionary period ; — he who had insti- 
tuted and organized those Committees of Correspondence, with- 
out which we could have had no united counsels, no concerted 
action, no union, no success; — he who, after the massacre of 
March 5, 1770, had demanded so heroically the removal from 
Boston of the British regiments, ever afterwards known as 
" Sam. Adams's regiments," — telling the Governor to his face, 
with an emphasis aiid an eloquence which were hardly ever ex- 
ceeded since Demosthenes stood on the Bema, or Paul on Mars 
Hill, " If the Lieutenant-governor, or Colonel Dalrymple, or 
both together, have authority to remove one regiment, they 
have authority to remove two ; and nothing short of the total 



16 

evacuation of the Town, by all the regular troops, will satisfy 
the public mind or preserve the peace of the Province ;" — he, 
" the Palinurus of the American Revolution," as Jefferson once 
called him, but — thank Heaven! — a Palinurus who was 
never put to sleep at the helm, never thrown into the sea, but 
who is still watching the compass and the stars, and steering 
the ship as she enters at last the haven he has so long yearned 
for : — the veteran Samuel Adams, — the disinterested, inflexible, 
incorruptible statesman, — is second to no one in that whole Con- 
gress, hardly second to any one in the whole thirteen Colonies, 
in his claim to the honors and grateful acknowledgments of this 
liour. We have just gladly hailed his statue on its way to the 
capitol. 

Nor must the name of Robert Treat Paine be forgotten 
among the five delegates of Massachusetts in that Hall of Inde- 
pendence, a hundred years ago to-day ; — an able lawyer, a 
learned judge, a just man ; connected by marriage, if I mistake 
not, Mr. Mayor, with your own gallant grandfather. General 
Cobb, and who himself inlierited the blood and illustrated the 
virtues of the hero and statesman whose name he bore, — Robert 
Treat, a most distinguished officer in King Philip's War, and 
afterwards a worthy Governor of Connecticut. 

And with him, too, is Elbridge Gerry, the very youngest 
member of the whole Continental Congress, just thirty-two 
years of age, — who had been one of the chosen friends of our 
proto-martyr. General Joseph Warren ; who was with Warren, 
at Watertown, the very last night before he fell at Bunker Hill, 
and into whose ear that heroic volunteer had whispered those 
memorable words of presentiment, "Dulce et decorum est pro 
patria niori ; " who lived himself to serve his Commonwealth 
and the Nation, ardently and efficiently, at home and abroad, 
ever in accordance with his own patriotic injunction, — " It is 
the duty of every citizen, though he may have but one day to 
live, to devote that day to the service of his country," — and 
died on his way to his post as Vice-president of the United 
States. 

One more name is still to be pronounced. One more star of 
that little Massachusetts cluster is still to be observed and noted. 



17 

And it is one, whicli, on the precise occasion we commemorate, 
— one, which during those great days of June and July, 1776, 
on wliich the question of Independence was immediately dis- 
cussed and decided, — had hardly "a fellow in the firmament," 
and which was certaiidy "the bright, particular star" of our 
own constellation. You will all have anticipated me in nam- 
ing John Adams. Beyond all doubt, his is the Massachusetts 
name most prominently associated with the immediate Day we 
celebrate. 

Others may have been earlier or more active than he in pre- 
paring the way. Others may have labored longer and more 
zealously to instruct the popular mind and inflame the popular 
heart for the great step which was now to be taken. Others 
maj' have been more ardent, as they unquestionably were more 
prominent, in the various stages of the struggle against Writs 
of Assistance, and Stamp Acts, and Tea Taxes. But from 
the date of that marvellous letter of his to Nathan Webb, in 
1755, when he was less than twenty years old, he seems to have 
forecast the destinies of this continent as few other men of any 
age, at that daj^, had done ; while from the moment at which 
the Continental Congress took the question of Independence 
fairly in hand, as a question to be decided and acted on, until 
they had brought it to its final issue in the Declaration, his was 
the voice, above and before all other voices, which commanded 
the ears, convinced the minds, and inspired the hearts of his 
colleagues, and triumphantly secured the result. 

I need not" speak of him in other relations or in after years. 
His long life of varied and noble service to his country, in almost 
every sphere of public duty, domestic and foreign, belongs to 
historj' ; and history has long ago taken it in charge. But the 
testimony which was borne to his grand efforts and utterances, 
by the author of the Declaration himself, can never be gainsaid, 
never be weakened, never be forgotten. That testimony, old 
as it is, familiar as it is, belongs to this day. John Adams will 
be rememljered and honored for ever, in every true American 
heart, as the acknowledged Champion of Independence in the 
Continental Congress, — " coming out with a power which 
moved us from our seats," — " our Colossus on the floor." 



18 

And when we recall the circumstances of his death, — the 
year, the day, the hour, — and the last words upon his dying 
lips, " Independence for ever," — who can help feeling that 
there was some mysterious tie holding back his heroic spirit 
from the shies, until it should be set free amid the exulting 
shouts of his country's first National Jubilee ! 

But not his heroic spirit alone ! 

In this rapid survey of the men assembled at Philadelphia a 
hundred years ago to-day, I began with Thomas Jefferson, of 
Virginia, and I end with John Adams, of Massachusetts ; and 
no one can hesitate to admit that, under God, they were the 
very alpha and omega of that day's doings, — the pen and the 
tongue, — the masterly author, and the no less masterly advo- 
cate, of the Declaration. 

And now, my friends, what legend of ancient Rome or Greece 
or Egypt, what m3'th of prehistoric mythology, what story of 
Herodotus, or fable of jEsop, or metamorphosis of Ovid, would 
have seemed more fabulous and mythical, — did it rest on 
any remote or doubtful tradition, and had not so many of us 
lived to be startled and thrilled and awed by it, — than the fact, 
that these two men, under so many different circumstances and 
surroundings, of age and constitution and climate, widely dis- 
tant from each other, living alike in quiet neighborhoods, remote 
from the smoke and stir of cities, and long before railroads or 
telegraphs had made any advances towards the annihilation or 
abridgment of space, should have been released to their rest and 
summoned to tlie skies, not only on the same day, but that day 
the Fourth of July, and that Fourth of July the Fiftieth Anni- 
versary of that great Declaration which they had contended for 
and carried through so triumphantly side by side ! 

What an added emphasis Jefferson would have given to his 
inscription on this little desk, — " Politics, as well as Religion, 
has its superstitions," — could he have foreseen the close even 
of his own life, much more the simultaneous close of these two 
lives, on that Day of days! Oh, let me not admit the idea of 
superstition ! Let me rather reverently say, as Webster said at 
the time, in that magnificent Eulogy which left so little for any 
one else to say as to the lives or deaths of Adams and Jefferson : 



19 

" As tlieir lives themselves were the gifts of Providence, who is 
not willing- to recognize in tlieir happy termination, as well as 
in their long continuance, proofs that our country and its bene- 
factors are objects of His care?" 

And now another Fifty Years have passed away, and we are 
holding our high Centennial Festival ; and still that most 
striking, most impressive, most memorable coincidence in all 
American history, or even in the authentic records of mankind, 
is without a visible monument anywhere ! 

In the interesting little city of Weimar, renowned as the resort 
and residence of more than one of the greatest philosophers 
and poets of Germany, many a traveller must have seen and 
admired the charming statues of Goethe and Schiller, standing- 
side by side and hand in hand, on a single pedestal, and offering, 
as it were, the laurel wreath of literary priority or preeminence to 
each otlier. Few nobler works of art, in conception or execution, 
can be found on the Continent of Europe. And what could be a 
wortliier or juster commeuioration of the marvellous coinciilence 
of which I liave just spoken, and of the men who were the sub- 
jects of it, and of the Declaration with which, alike in their lives 
and in their deaths, tliey are so peculiarly and so signally associ- 
ated, tlian just such a Monument, with the statues of Adams 
and Jefferson, side b}' side and hand in hand, upon the same base, 
pressing upon each otlier, in mutual acknowledgment and def- 
erence, the victor palm of a triumpli for which tliey must ever 
be held in common and equal honor ! It would be a new tie 
between Massachusetts and Virginia. It would be a new bond 
of that Union which is the safety and the glory of both. It 
would be a new pledge of that restored g-ood-will between the 
North and South, which is the herald and harbinger of a Second 
Century of National Independence; It would be a fit recogni- 
tion of the great Hand of God in our history ! 

At all events, it is one of the crying omissions and neglects 
which reproach us all this day, that "glorious old Jolin Adams" 
is without any proportionate public monument in the State of 
wliic'h he was one of tlie very grandest citizens and sons, and 
in whose behalf he rendered such inestimable services to his 
countrv. It is almost ludicrous to look around and see wdio 



20 

has been commemorated, and he neglected I He might be seen 
standing alone, as he knew so well how to stand alone in life. 
He might be seen gronped with, his illnstrions son, only second 
to himself in his claims on the omitted posthumons honors of 
his native State. Or, if the claim of nol)le women to such 
commemorations were ever to be recognized on our soil, he 
might be lovingly grouped with that incomparable wife, from 
whom he was so often separated by public duties and personal 
dangers, and whose familiar correspondence with him, and his 
with her, furnishes a picture of fidelity and affection, and of 
patriotic zeal and courage and self-sacrifice, almost without a 
parallel in our Revolutionary Annals. 

But before all other statues, let us have those of Adams and 
Jefferson on a single block, as they stood together just a hundred 
yenYii ago to-day, — as they were translated together just fifty 
years ago to-day : — foremost for Independence in their lives, and 
in their deaths not divided ! Next, certainly, to the completion 
of the National Monument to Washington, at the Capital, this 
double statue of this " double star " of the Declaration calls for 
the contributions of a patriotic people. It would liave some- 
thing of special appropriateness as the first gift to that Boston 
Park, which is to date from this Centennial Period. 

I have felt, Mr. Mayor and Fellow Citizens, as I am sure you 
all must feel, that the men who were gathered at Philadelphia 
a liundred years ago to-day, familiar as their names and their 
story may be, to ourselves and to all the world, had an impera- 
tive claim to the first and highest honors of this Centennial 
Anniversary. But, having paid these passing tributes to their 
memory, I hasten to turn to considerations less purely personal. 

The Declaration has been adopted, and has been sent forth 
in a hundred journals, and on a thousand broadsides, to every 
camp and council chamber, to every town and village and ham- 
let and fireside, throughout the Colonies. What was it ? What 
did it declare ? What was its rightful interpretation and inten- 
tion? Under what circumstances was it adopted? What did 
it accomplish for ourselves and for mankind ? 

A recent and powerful writer on " The Growth of the English 



21 

Constitution,"' whom I had the pleasure of meeting at tlie Com- 
mencement of Ohl Cambiidge University two years ago, says 
most strikingly and most justly : " There are certain great polit- 
ical documents, each of which forms a landmark in onr political 
history. There is the Great Charter, The Petition of Rights, 
the Bill of Rights." " But not one of them," he adds, " gave it- 
self out as the enactment of any thing new. All claimed to set 
forth, with new strength, it might be, and with new clearness, 
those rights of Englishmen, which were already old." The 
same remark has more recentl}^ been incorporated into "■ A 
Short History of the English People." " In itself," says the 
writer of that admirable little volume, " the Charter was no 
novelty, nor did it claim to establish any new Constitutional 
principles. The Charter of Henr}^ I. formed the basis of the 
whole ; and the additions to it are, for the most part, formal 
recognitions of the judicial and administrative changes intro- 
duced by Henry II." 

So substantially, — so, almost precisely, — it may lie said of the 
(treat American Charter, which was drawn up by Thomas Jef- 
ferson on the precious little desk which lies before me. It made 
no pretensions to novelty. The men of 1776 were not in any 
sense, certainly not in any seditious sense, greedy of novelties, — 
" avidi novarum rerumy They had claimed nothing new. They 
desired nothing new. Their old original rights as Englishmen 
were all that they sought to enjoy, and those they resolved to 
vindicate. It was the invasion and denial of those old rights of 
Englishmen, Avhich they resisted and revolted from. 

As our excellent fellow-citizen, Mr. Dana, so well said pub- 
licly at Lexington, last year, — and as we should all have l)een 
glad to have him in the way of repeating quietly in London, 
this year, — " We were not the Revolutionists. The King and 
Parliament were the Revolutionists. They were the radical in- 
novators. We were the conservators of existing institutions." 

No one has forgotten, or can ever forget, how early and how 
emphatically all this was admitted by some of the grandest 
statesmen and orators of England herself. It was the attempt 
to subvert our rights as Englishmen, which roused Chatham to 
some of his most majestic efforts. It was the attempt to sub- 



99 



vert our rights as Englishmen, which kindled Burke to not a few 
of his most brilliant utterances. It was the attempt to sul)vert 
our rights as Englishmen, which inspired Barre and Conway and 
Camden with appeals and arguments and phrases which will 
keep their memories fresh when all else associated with them 
is forgotten. The names of all three of them, as you well know, 
have long been the cherished designations of American Towns. 

They all perceived and understood that we were contending 
for English rights, and against the violation of the great princi- 
ples of English liberty. Nay, not a few of them perceived and 
understood that we were fighting their battles as well as our 
own, and that the lil)erties of Englishmen upon their own soil 
Avere virtually involved in our cause and in our contest. 

There is a most notal)le letter of Josiah Quincy, Jr.'s, written 
from London at the end of 1774, — a few months oidy before 
that young patriot returned to die so sadl}^ within sight of his 
native shores, — in which he tells his wife, to whom lie was not 
likely to write for any mere sensational effect, that " some of the 
first characters for understanding, integrity, and spirit," whom 
he had met in London, had used language of this sort : "■ This 
Nation is lost. Corruption and the influence of the Crown have 
led us into bondage, and a Standing Army has riveted our chains. 
To America only can we look for salvation. 'Tis America only 
can save England. Unite and persevere. You must prevail — 
you must triumph." Quincy was careful not to betray names, 
in a letter which might be intercepted before it reached its des- 
tination. But we know the men with whom he had been 
brought into association by Franklin and other friends, — men 
like Shelburne and Hartley and Pownall and Priestley and 
Brand Hollis and Sir George Saville, to say nothing of Burke 
and Chatham. The language was not lost upon us. We did 
unite and persevere. We did prevail and triumph. And it is 
hardly too much to say that we did "• save England." We 
saved her from herself; — saved her from being the successful 
instrument of overthrowing the rights of Englishmen ; — saved 
her "from the poisoned chalice which would have been com- 
mended to her own lips;" — saved her from "the bloody 
instructions which would have returned to plague the inventor." 



23 

Not only was it true, as Lord Macaiilay said in one of his bril- 
liant Essays, that " England was never so rich, so great, so for- 
midable to foreign princes, so absolutely mistress of the seas, as 
since the alienation of her American Colonies," but it is not less 
true that England came out of that contest with new and larger 
views of Liberty ; with a broader and deeper sense of what was 
due to human rights ; and with an experience of incalculable 
value to her in the management of tlie vast Colonial System 
which remained, or was in store, for her. 

A vast and gigantic Colonial System, bej-ond doubt, it has 
proved to be ! She was just entering, a hundred years ago, on 
that wonderful career of conquest in the East, which was to 
compensate her, — if it were a compensation, — for her impend- 
ing losses in the West. Her gallant Cornwallis was soon to 
receive the jewelled sword of Tippoo Saib at Bangalore, in ex- 
change for that which he was now destined to surrender to 
AVashington at Yorktown. It is certainly not among the least 
striking coincidences of our Centennial Year, that at the very 
moment when we are celebrating the event which stripped Great 
Britain of thirteen Colonies and three millions of subjects, — 
now grown into thirty-eight States and more than forty millions of 
people, — she is welcoming the return of her amiable and genial 
Prince from a royal progress through the Avide-spread regions 
of " Ormus'and of Lid," bringing back, to lay at the foot of the 
British throne, the homage of nine principal Provinces and a 
hundred and forty-eight feudatory States, and of not less than 
two hundred and forty millions of people, from Ceylon to the 
Himalayas, and affording ample justification for the Queen's new 
title of Empress of India ! Among all the parallelisms of modern 
historj', there are few more striking and im})ressive than this. 

The American Colonies never quarrelled or cavilled about 
the titles of their Sovereign. If, as has been said, " they went 
to war about a preamble," it was not about the preamble of the 
royal name. It was the Imperial power, the more than Im- 
perial pretensions and usur[)ations, which drove thein to re- 
bellion. The Declaration was, in its own terms, a personal and 
most stringent arraignment of the King. It could have been 
nothing else. George HI. was to us the sole responsible instru- 



24 

meat of oppression. Parliament had, indeed, sustained liim ; but 
the Colonies had never admitted the authority of a Parliament 
in which they had no representation. There is no passage in 
Mr. Jefferson's paper more carefully or more felicitously worded, 
than that in which he saj^s of the Sovereign, that " he has com- 
bined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our 
constitutions and unacknowledged by "our laws, — giving his 
assent to their aets of pretended legislation."" A slip of." the 
masterly pen " on this point might have cost us our consistency ; 
but that pen was on its guard, and this is the only allusion to 
Lords or Commons. We could recognize no one but the Mon- 
arch. We could contend with nothing less than Royalty. We 
could separate ourselves only from the Crown. English prece- 
dents had abundantly taught us that kings were not beyond the 
reach of arraignment and indictment ; and arraignment and in- 
dictment were then our only means of justifying our cause to 
ourselves and to the world. Yes ; harsh, severe, stinging, 
scolding, — I had almost said, — as that long series of allega- 
tions and accusations may sound, and certainl}' does sound, as 
we read it or listen to it, in cold blood, a century after the 
issues are all happily settled, it was a temperate and a dignified 
utterance under the circumstances of the case, and breathed 
quite enough of moderation to be relished or accepted by those 
who were bearing the brunt of so terrible a struggle for life and 
libert}^ and all that was dear to them, as that which those issues 
involved. Nor in all that bitter indictment is there a single 
count which does not refer to, and rest upon, some violation 
of the rights of Englishmen, or some violation of the rights of 
humanity. We stand by the Declaration to-day, and always, 
and disavow nothing of its reasoning or its rhetoric. 

And, after all, Jefferson was not a whit more severe on the 
King than Chatham had been on the King's Ministers six 
months before, when he told them to their faces : " The whole 
of your political conduct has been one continued series of 
weakness, temerity, despotism, ignorance, futility, negligence, 
blundering, and the most notorious servility, incapacity, and 
corruption." Nor was William Pitt, the younger, much more 
measured in his language, at a later period of our struggle, 



25 

when he declared : " These Ministers will destroy the empire 
the}^ were called upon to save, before the indignation of a great 
and suffering people can fall upon their heads in the punish- 
ment which they deserve. I affirm tlie war to have been a 
most accursed, wicked, barbarous, cruel, unnatural, unjust, and 
diabolical war." 

I need not say, Fellow Citizens, that we are here to indulge in 
no reproaches upon Old England to-day, as we look back from 
tlie lofty height of a Century of Independence on the course of 
events which severed us from her dominions. We are by no 
means in the mood to re-open the adjudications of Ghent or of 
Geneva ; nor can we allow the ties of old traditions to be 
seriously jarred, on such an occasion as this, by any recent fail- 
ures of extraditions, however vexatious or provoking. But, 
certainly, resentments on either side, for any thing said or done 
during our Ilevolutionary period, — after such a lapse of time, 
— would dishonor the hearts which cherished them, and the 
tongues which uttered them. Who wonders that George 
the Third would not let such Colonies as oiu-s go wi-thout a 
struggle? The}'^ were the brightest jewels of his crown. 
Who wonders that he shrunk from the responsibility of such a 
dismemberment of his empire, and that his brain reeled at the 
very thought of it ? It would have been a poor compliment 
to us, had he not considered us worth holding at any and 
every cost. We should hardly have forgiven him, had he 
not desired to retain us. Nor can we altogether wonder, that 
^Aith the views of kingly prerogative which belonged to 
that period, and in which he was educated, he should have 
preferred the policy of coercion to that of conciliation, and 
should have insisted on sending over troops to subdue us. 

Our old Mother Country has had, indeed, a peculiar destiny, 
and in many respects a glorious one. Not alone with her drum- 
beat, as Webster so grandly said, has she encircled the earth. 
Not alone with her martial airs has she kept company with the 
hours. She has carried civilization and Christianity wherever 
she has carried lier flag. Slie has carried her noble tongue, with 
all its incomparaljlc treasures of literature and science and reli- 
gion, around the globe ; and, with our aid, — for she will con- 

4 



26 

fess that we are doing our full part in this line of extension, — 
it is fast becoming the most pervading speecli of civihzed man. 
We tliank God at this hour, and at every hour, that " Chat- 
ham's hxnguage is our mother tongue," and that we have an in- 
herited and an indisputable share in the glory of so many of the 
great names by which that language has been illustrated and 
adorned. 

But she has done more than all this. She has planted the 
great institutions and principles of civil freedom in every lati- 
tude where she could find a foot-hold. From her, our Revolu- 
tionary Fatliers learned to understand and value them, and from 
her they inherited the spirit to defend them. Not in vain had 
her brave barons extorted Magna Charta from King John. Not 
in vain had her Simon de ^Nlontfort summr)ned the knights and 
burgesses, and laid the foundations of a Parliament and a House 
of Commons. Not in vain had her nolde Sir John Eliot died, as 
the martyr of free speech, in the Tower. Not in vain had her 
heroic Hampden resisted ship-money, and died on the battle- 
field. Not in vain for us, certainly, the great examples and the 
great warnings of Cromwell and the Commonwealth, or those 
sadder ones of Sidney and Russell, or that later and more glori- 
ous one still of William of Orange. 

The grand lessons of her own history, forgotten, overlooked, 
or resolutely disregarded, it may be, on her own side of the 
Atlantic, in the days we are commemorating, were the very 
inspiration of her Colonies on this side : and under that inspira- 
tion they contended and conquered. And though she may 
sometimes be almost tempted to take sadly upon her lips the 
words of the old prophet, — "I have nourished and brought up 
children, and they have rebelled against me," — she has long 
ago learned that such a rebellion as ours was really in her own 
interest, and for her own ultimate welfare ; begun, continued, 
and ended, as it was, in vindication of the liberties of English- 
men. 

I cannot forget how justly and eloquently my friend. Dr. 
Ellis, a few months ago, in this same hall, gave expression to 
the respect which is so widely entertained on this side of the 
Atlantic for the Sovereign Lady who has now graced the British 



27 

throne for nearly forty years. No passage of his admirable 
Oration elicited a warmer response from the multitudes who 
listened to him. How much of the growth and grandeur of 
Great Britain is associated with the names of illustrious women! 
Even those of us who have no fancy for female suffrage might 
often be well nigh tempted to take refuge, from the incompe- 
tencies and intrigues and corruptions of men, under the presi- 
dency of the purer and geutler sex. AVhat Avould English 
histor}' be without the names of Elizabeth and Anne ! What 
would it be without the name of Victoria, — of whom it 
has recently been written, " that, by a long course of loyal 
acquiescence in the declared wishes of her people, she has 
brought about what is nothing less than a great Revolution, 
— all the more beneficent because it has been gradual and 
silent ! " Ever honored be her name, and that of her lamented 
consort I 

" Ever beloved and loving may her rule be ; 
And when old Time shall lead her to her end, 
Goodness and she fill U]) one monument ! " 

The Declaration is adopted and promulgated : but we may 
not forget how long and how serious a reluctance there had been 
to take the irrevocable step. As late as September, 1774, Wash- 
ington had publicly declared his belief that Independence " was 
wished by no thinking man/' As late as the Gth of March, 
1775, in his memorable Oration in the Old South, with all the 
associations of " the Boston Massacre" fresh in his heart, Warren 
had declared that " Independence was not our aim." As late as 
July, 1775, the letter of the Continental Congress to the Lord 
jNIayor and Corporation of London had said : " North America, 
my Lord, washes most ardently for a lasting connection with 
Great Britain, on terms of just and equal liberty;" and a simul- 
taneous humble petition to the King, signed by every member 
of the Congress, reiterated the same assurance. And as late 
as the 25th of August, 1775, Jefferson himself, in a letter to the 
John Randolph of that day, speaking of those who " still wish 
for reunion with their parent country," says most emphatically, 
" I am one of those ; and would rather be in dependence on 
Great Britain, properly limited, than on any nation on earth, or 



28 

tlian on no nation." Not all the blood of Lexington, and Con- 
cord, and Bunker Hill, crying from the ground long before these 
words were Avritten, had extinguished the wish for reconcili- 
ation and reunion even in the heart of the very author of the 
Declaration. 

Tell me not, tell me not, that there was any thing of equivoca- 
tion, any thing of hypocrisy, in these and a hmidred other similar 
expressions which might be cited. The truest human hearts are 
full of such inconsistency and hypocrisy as that. The dearest 
friends, the tenderest relatives, are never more overflowing and 
outpouring, nor ever more sincere, in feelings and expressions of 
devotion and love, than Avhen called to contera})late some terri- 
ble impending necessity of final separation and divorce. The ties 
between us and Old England could not be sundered without 
sadness, and sadness on both sides of the ocean. Franklin, 
albeit his eyes were " unused to the melting mood," is recorded 
to have M'ept as he left England, in view of the inevitable result 
of which he was coming home to ])e a witness and an instrument ; 
and T have heard from tlie poet Rogers's own lips, what many 
of you may have read in his Table-Talk, how deeply he was 
impressed, as a boy, by his father's putting on a mourning suit, 
Avheu he heard of the first shedding of American blood. 

Nor could it, in the nature of things, have been only their 
warm and undoubted attachment to England, which made so 
many of the men of 177G reluctant to the last to cross the Ru- 
bicon. The}' saw clearly before them, they c(uild not help 
seeing, the full proportions, the tremendous odds, of the con- 
test into which the Colonies must be plunged by such a step. 
Think 3'ou. that no apprehensions and anxieties weighed heavily 
on the mhuls and hearts of those far-seehig men ? Think you, 
that as their names were called on the day we conuuemorate, 
beginning with Josiah Bartlett, of New Hampshire, — or as, one 
by one, they approached the Secretary's desk on the following 
2d of August, to write their names on that now hallowed parch- 
ment, — they did not realize the full responsibiUty, and the full 
risk to tlieir country and to themselves, which such a vote and 
such a signature involved? They sat, indeed, with closed 
doors; and it is only from traditions or eaves-droppings, or 



29 

from tlic casual expressions of diaries or letters, that we catch 
glimpses of what was done, or gleanings of what was. said. J) at 
how full of import are some of those glimpses and gleanings I 

''Will you sign?" said Hancock to Charles Carroll, who, as 
we have seen, had not been present on the 4tli of 'July. " Most 
Avillingly," was the reply. "There goes two millions with a 
dash of the pen," says one of those standing by ; while another 
remarks, " Oh, Carroll, you will get off, there are so many 
Charles Carrolls." And then we may see him stepping back to 
the desk, and j)ntting that addition — " of Carrollton " — to his 
name, which will designate him for ever, and be a prouder title 
of no))ility than those in the peerage of Great JJritain, which 
were afterwards adorned by his accomplished and fascinat- 
ing* "'randdauLLhters. 

"We must stand by each other — we must hang together," — 
is presently heard from some one of the signersj with the instant 
reply, " Yes, we must hang together, or we shall assuredly hang 
separately." And, on this suggestion, the portly and humorous 
Benj. Harrison, whom we have seen forcing Hancock into the 
Chair, may be heard bantering our spare and slender Elbridge 
Gerry, — levity provoking levity, — and telling him with grim 
meriiment that, when that lianghig scene arri^ es, he shall have 
the advantage : — "It will be all over with me in a moment, but 
you will be kicking in the air half an hour after I am gone! ' 
These are among the " asides " of the drama, but, I need not 
say, they more than make up in significance, for all they may 
seem to lack in dignity. 

The excellent William Ellery of Rhode Island, whose name 
was afterwards borne by his grandson, our revered Channing, 
often spoke, we are told, of the scene of the signing, and spoke 
of it as an event which many regarded with awe, perhaps with 
uncertainty, Init none with fear. " I was determined," he used 
to say, " to see how all looked, as they signed what might be 
their death Avarrant. I placed myself beside the Secretary, 
Charles Thompson, and eyed each closely as he affixed his 
name to tlie document. Undaunted resolution was displayed in 
every countenance." 

" You inquire," wrote John Adams to William Plumer, 



30 

" wlietlier every member of Congress did, on the 4th of July, 
177(), in fact, cordially approve of the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence. They who were then members all signed it, and, as I 
could not see their hearts, it would be hard for me to say that 
they did not approve it ; but, as far as I conld ])enetrate the in- 
tricate internal foldings of their souls, I then believed, and have 
not since altered my opinion, that there were several who signed 
with regret, and several others with many doubts and much 
lukewarmness. The measure had been on the carpet for months, 
and obstinately opj^osed from day to day. Majorities w^ere con- 
stantly against it. For many days the majority depended upon 
Mr. Hewes of North Carolina. While a member one day was 
speaking, and reading documents from all the Colonies to prove 
that the public oj)inion, the general sense of all, was in favor of 
the measure, when he came to North Carolina, and produced 
letters and public proceedings which demonstrated that the ma- 
jority of that Colony were in favor of it, Mr. Hewes, who had 
hitherto constantly voted against it, started suddenly upright, 
and lifting up both his hands to Heaven, as if he kad been in a 
trance, cried out, ' It is done, and I will abide by it.' I would 
give more for a perfect painting of the terror and horror upon 
the faces of the old majority', at that critical moment, than for 
the l)est piece of Raphael." 

There is quite enough in these traditions and hearsays, in 
these glimpses and gleanings, to show us that the supporters and 
signers of the Declaration w^ere not blind to the responsibilities 
and hazards in which they were involving themselves and the 
country. There is quite enough, certainly, in these and other 
indications, to give color and credit to what I so well remember 
hearing the late Mr. Justice Story say, half a century ago, that, 
as the result of all his conversations with the great men of the 
Revolutionary Period, — and especially with his illustrious and 
venerated chief on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United 
States, John Marshall, — he was convinced that a majority 
of the Continental Congress was opposed to the Declaration, 
and that it was carried through by the patient, persistent, and 
overwhelming efforts and arguments of the minority. 

Two of those arguments, as Mr. Jefferson has left them on 



31 

record, were enough for that occasion, or certainly are enough 
for this. 

One of the two was, " That the people wait for us to lead the 
way ; that tliey are in favor of the measure, though the instructions 
given by some ot" their representatives are not." And most true, 
indeed, it was, my friends, at that day, as it often has been since 
that day, that the people were ahead of their so-called leaders. 
The minds of the masses were made up. They had no doubts 
or misgivings. They demanded that Independence should be 
recognized and proclaimed. John Adams knew how to keep u[) 
with them. Sam. Adams had kept his finger on their pulse from 
the beginning, and had " marked time " for every one of their 
advancing steps. Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee and 
Thomas Jefferson, and some other ardent and noble spirits, were 
by no means behind them. But not a few of the leaders Avere, 
in fact, only followers. " The people waited for them to lead 
the way."' Independence was the resolve and the act of the 
American people, and the American people gladly received, and 
enthusiastically ratified, and heroically sustained the Declaration, 
until Independence was no longer a question either at home or 
abroad. Yes, our (Ireat Charter, as we fondl}- call it, though 
with something, it must be confessed, of poetic or patriotic 
license, was no tem[)orizing concession, wrung by menaces from 
reluctant Monarchs ; but w\as the spontaneous and imperative 
dictate of a Nation resolved to be free ! 

The other of those two arguments was even more conclusive 
and more clinching. It was, " That the question was not 
whether bA'^a Declaration of Independence we should make our- 
selves what we are not, but whether we should declare a fact 
which already exists." 

" A fact Avhich already exists ! " Mr. Mayor and Fellow Citi- 
zens, there is no more interesting historical truth to us of Boston 
than this. Our hearts are all at Philadelphia to-day, as I have 
already said, rejoicing in all that is there said and done in honor 
of the men Avho made this day immortal, and hailing it, with 
our fellow-countrymen, from ocean to ocean, and from the lakes 
to the gulf, as our National Birtluhw. And nobly has Phila- 
delphia met the recjuisitions, and more than fulfilled the expecta- 



?.9 



tions, of tlie occasion ; furnishing a fete and a pageant of which 
the whole Nation is proud. Yet we are not called on to for- 
get, — we could not be pardoned, indeed, for not remembering, 
— that, while the Declaration was boldly and grandly made in that 
hallowed Pennsylvania Hall, Independence had already been 
won, — and won here in Massachusetts. It was said l)y some 
one of the old patriots, — John Adams, I believe, — ■ that " the 
Revolution was eifected before the war commenced ; " and Jeffer- 
son is now our authority for the assertion that " Independence ex- 
isted before it was declared." They both well knew what they 
were talking about. Congresses in Carpenters' Hall, and Con- 
gresses in the old Pennsylvania State House, did grand things 
and were composed of grand men, and we render to their memo- 
ries all tlie homage and all the glory which they so richly earned. 
But here in Boston, the capital of Massachusetts, and the principal 
town of British North America at that day, the question had 
already been brought to an issue, and already been irrev^ocably 
decided. Here the manifest destiny of the Colonies had been 
recognized and accepted. It was upon us, as all the world 
knows, that the blows of British oppression fell first and fell 
heaviest, — fell like a storm of hail-stones and coals of fire; 
and where they fell, and as soon as they fell, they were resisted, 
and successfully resisted. 

Wh}^, away back in 1761, when George the Third had been 
but a year on his throne, and when the printer's ink on the 
pages of our Harvard " Pietas et Gratulatio " was hardly dry ; 
when the Seven Years' War was still unfinished, in which New 
England had done her full share of the fighting, and reaped 
her full share of the glory, and when the British flag, by the 
help of her men and money, was just floating in triumph over 
the whole American continent, — a mad resolution had been 
adopted to reconstruct — Oh, word of ill-omen! — the whole 
Colonial system, and to bring America into closer conformity 
and subjection to the laws of the Mother Country. A Revenue 
is to be collected here. A Standing Army is to be established 
here. The Navigation Act and Acts of Trade are to be en- 
forced and executed here. And all without any representation 
on our part. — The first practical step in this direction is taken. 



A ciistom-lioiise officer, named Cockle, applies to the Superior 
Court at Salem for a writ of assistance. That cockle-shell 
exploded like dynamite ! The Court postpones the case, and 
orders its argument in Boston. And then and there, ^ — in 17G1, 
in our Old Town House, afterwards known as the Old State 
House, — alas, alas, that it is thought necessary to talk about 
removing or even reconstructing it ! — James Otis, as John 
Adams himself tells us, " breathed into this nation the breath 
of life." " Tlien and there," he adds, and he spoke pf what he 
witnessed and heard, " then and there the child Independence 
was born. In fifteen years, i.e.^ in 1770, he grew up to man- 
hood, and declared himself free." 

The next year finds the same great scholar and orator expos- 
ing himself to the cry of " treason " in denouncing the idea of 
taxation without representation, and forthwith vindicating him- 
self in a masterly pamphlet which excited the admiration and 
sympathy of the whole people. 

Another year brings the first instalment of the scheme for 
raising a revenue in the Colonies, — in the shape of declaratory 
resolves ; and Otis meets it plumply and boldly, in Faneuil 
Hall, — at that moment freshly rebuilt and reopened, — with 
the counter declaration that " every British subject in America 
is, of common right, by act of Parliament, and by the laws of 
(lod and Nature, entitled to all the essential privileges of 
Britons." 

And now George Grenville has devised and proposed the 
Stamp Act. And, before it is even known that the Bill had 
passed, Samuel Adams is heard reading, in that same Faneuil 
Hall, at the May meeting of 1704, those memorable instructions 
from Boston to her representatives : " There is no room for de- 
lay. If taxes are laid upon us in any shape without our having 
a legal representation where they are laid, are we not reduced 
from the character of free subjects to the miserable state of 
tributary slaves? . . . We claim British rights, not by char- 
ter only: we are born to them. Use your endeavors that 
the Aveight of the otlier North American Colonies may be 
added to that of this Province, that by united application all 
may happily obtain redress." Redress and Union — and union as 

6 



34 

the means, and the only means of redress — had thus early be- 
come the doctrine of our Boston leaders ; and James Otis fol- 
lows out that doctrine, without a moment's delay, in another 
brilliant plea for the rights of the Colonies. 

The next year finds the pen of John Adams in motion, in a 
powerful communication to the public journals, setting forth 
distinctly, that " there seems to be a direct and formal design 
on foot in Great Britain to enslave all America ; " and adding 
most ominously those emphatic words : " Be it remembered, 
Liberty must be defended at all hazards ! " 

And, I need not say, it was remembered ; and Liberty was 
defended, at all hazards, here, upon our own soil. 

Ten long years, however, are still to elapse before the wager 
of battle is to be fully joined. The stirring events Avliich 
crowded those years, and which have been so vividly depicted 
by Sparks and Bancroft and Frothingham, — to name no others, 
— are too familiar for repetition or reference. Virginia, through 
the clarion voice of Patrick Henry, nobly sustained by her 
House of Burgesses, leads off in the grand remonstrance. Mas- 
sachusetts, through the trumpet tones of James Otis, rouses the 
whole Continent by a demand for a General Congress. South 
Carolina, through the influence of Christopher Gadsden, re- 
sponds first to the demand. " Deep calleth unto deep." In 
October, 1765, delegates, regularly or irregularly chosen, from 
nine Colonies, are in consultation at New York ; and from 
South Carolina comes the watch- word of assured success: 
" There ought to be no New England man, ilo New Yorker, 
known on the Continent ; but all of us Americans." 

Meantime, the people are everywhere inflamed and maddened 
by the attempt to enforce the Stamp Act. Everywhere that at- 
tempt is resisted. Everywhere it is resolved that it shall never 
be executed. It is at length repealed, and a momentary lull suc- 
ceeds. But the repeal is accompanied by more declaratory resolu- 
tions of the power of Parliament to tax the Colonies " in all cases 
whatsoever ; " and then follows that train of abuses and usurpa- 
tions which Jefferson's immortal paper charges upon the King, 
and which the King himself unquestionably ordered. " It was 
to no purpose," said Lord North in 1774, "making objections, 



35 

for the King would have it so." "The King," said lie, "meant 
to try the qiieMlon with America." And it is well added, by 
the narrator of the anecdote, " Boston seems to have been the 
place fixed upon to try the question." 

Yes, at Boston, the bolts of Royal indignation are to be aimed 
and winged. She has been foremost in destroying the Stamps, in 
defying the Soldiers, in di'owning the Tea. Letters, too, have 
reached the government, like tliose which Rehum the Chancellor 
and Shimshai the Scribe wrote to King Artaxerxes about Jeru- 
salem, calling this " a rebellious city, and hurtful unto Kings and 
Provinces, and that they have moved sedition within the same of 
old time, and would not pay toll, tribute, and custom ; " and warn- 
ing His Majesty that, unless it was subdued and crushed, " he 
would have no portion on this side the River." In vain did our 
eloquent young Quincy pour forth his burning words of remon- 
strance. The Port of Boston is closed, and her people are to 
be starved into compliance. Well did Boston say of herself, in 
Town Meeting, that " She had been stationed by Providence in 
the front rank of the conflict." Grandly has our eloquent his- 
torian, Bancroft, said of her, in a sentence which sums up the 
whole matter " like the last embattelling of a Roman legion " : — 
" The King set himself and his Ministry and his Parliament and 
all Great Britain to subdue to his will one stubborn little town 
on the sterile coast of the Massachusetts Bay. The odds 
against it were fearful ; but it showed a life inextinguishable, 
and had been chosen to guard over the liberties of mankind ! " 

Gencrousl}' and nobly did the other Colonies come to our aid, 
and the cause of Boston was everywhere acknowledged to be 
"the cause of all." But we may not forget how peculiarly it 
was " the cause of Boston," and that here, on our own Massa- 
chusetts soil, the practical question of Independence was first 
tried and virtually settled. The brave Colonel Pickering at 
Salem Bridge, the heroic minute men at Lexington and Concord 
Bridge, the gallant Colonel Prescott at Bunker Hill, did their 
part in hastening that settlement and bringing it to a crisis ; 
and when the Continental xVrmy was at length brought to our 
rescue, and the glorious Washington, after holding the British 
forces at bay for nine months, had fairly driven them from the 



36 

town, — tliougli more than three months were still to intervene 
before the Declaration was to be made, — it could truly and 
justly be said that it was only " the declaration of a fact which 
already exists." 

Indeed, Massachusetts had practically administered " a gov- 
ernment independent of the King" from the 19th of July, 1775 ; 
while on the very first day of May, 1776, her General Court 
had passed a solemn Act, to erase forthwith the name of the 
King, and the year of his reign, from all civil commissions, 
writs, and precepts ; and to substitute therefor " the Year 
of the Christian Era, and the name of the Government and 
People of the Massachusetts Bay in New England." Other 
Colonies may have empowered or instructed their delegates in 
Congress, earlier than this Colony, to act on the subject. 
But this was action itself, — jDositive, decisive, conclusive 
action. The Declaration was made in Philadelphia ; but the 
Independence which was declared can date back nowhere, 
for its first existence as a fact, earlier than to Massachusetts. 
Upon her the lot fell " to try the question ; " and, with the 
aid of Washington and the Continental Army, it was tried, 
and tried triumphantly, upon her soil. Certainly, if Faneuil 
Hall was the Cradle of Liberty, our Old State House was the 
Cradle of Independence, and our Old South the Nursery of 
Liberty and Independence both ; and if these sacred edifices, 
all or any of them, are indeed destined to disappear, let us see 
to it that some corner of their sites, at least, be consecrated to 
monuments which shall tell their story, in legible lettering, to 
our children and our children's children for ever! 

Thanks be to God, that, in His good providence, the trial of 
this groat question fell primarily upon a Colony and a people 
peculiarly fitted to meet it ; — whose whole condition and train- 
ing had prepared them for it, and whose whole history had 
pointed to it. 

Why, quaint old John Evelyn, in his delicious Diary, tells us, 
under date of May, 1671, that the great anxiety of the Council 
for Plantations, of which he had just been made a member, was 
" to know the condition of New England," which appeared " to 
be very independent as to their regard to Old England or His 



37 

Majesty," and " almost upon the very brink of renouncing any 
dependence on the Crown ! " 

" I have always laughed," said John Adams, in a letter to 
Benjamin Rush, m 1807, " at the affectation of representing 
American Independence as a novel idea, as a modern discovery, 
as a late invention. The idea of it as a possible thing, as a 
probable event, as a necessary and unavoidable measure, in case 
Great Britain should assume an unconstitutional authority over 
us, has been familiar to Americans from the first settlement of 
the country, and was as well understood by Governor Winthrop, 
in 1675, as by Governor Samuel Adams, when he told you that 
Independence had been the first wish of his heart for seven 
years." " The principles and feelings which produced the Rev- 
olution," said he again, in his second letter to Tudor, in 1818, 
" ought to be traced back for two hundred years, and sought in 
the history of tlie country from the first plantations in Amer- 
ica." The first emigrants, he maintains, were the true authors 
of our Independence, and the men of the Revolutionary period, 
himself among them, were only " the awakeners and revivers of 
the original fundamental principle of Colonization." 

And the accomplished historian of New England, Dr. Pal- 
frey, follows up the idea, and says more precisely : " He who 
•well weighs the facts which have been presented in connection 
with the principal emigration to Massachusetts, and other related 
facts which will offer themselves to notice as we proceed, may 
find himself conducted to the conclusion that when Winthrop 
and his associates (in l(i29) prepared to convey across the water 
a Charter from the King, which, they hoped, would in their 
beginnings afford them some protection both from himself and, 
through him, from the Powers of Continental Europe, they had 
conceived a project no less important than that of laying on this 
side of the Atlantic the foundations of a Nation of Puritan Eng- 
lishmen, — foundations to be built upon as future circumstances 
should decide or allow." 

Indeed, that transfer of their Charter and of their " whole 
government" to New England, on their own responsibility, 
was an act closely approaching to a Declaration of Indepen- 
dence, and clearly foreshadowing it. And when, only a few 



38 

years afterwards, we find the magistrates and deputies resist- 
ing a demand for the surrender of the Charter, studiously and 
systematically "• avoiding and protracting " all questions on the 
suhject, and " hastening their fortifications " meantime ; and 
when we hear even the ministers of tlie Colony openly declar- 
ing that, " if a General Governor were sent over here, we 
ought not to accept him, but to defend our lawful possessions, 
if we were able, " — we recognize a spirit and a purpose 
whicli cannot l)e mistaken. That spirit and that purjiose 
were manifested and illustrated in a manner even more marked 
and unequivocal, — as the late venerable Josiah Quincy re- 
minded the people of Boston, just half a century ago to-day, — 
when under the lead of one who had come over in the ship 
with the Charter, and had lived to he the Nestor of New Eng- 
land, — Simon Bradstreet, — ''a glorious Revolution was ef- 
fected here in Massachusetts thirty days before it was known 
that King William had just effected a similar glorious Revolu- 
tion on the other side of the Atlantic." New England, it 
seems, with characteristic and commendable despatch, had fairly 
got rid of Sir Edmond Andros, a month before she knew that 
Old England had got rid of his Master ! 

But 1 do not forget that we must look further back than even 
the earliest settlement. of the American Colonies for the primal 
Fiat of Independence. I do not forget that when Edmund 
Burke, in 1775, in alluding to the possibility of an American 
representation in Parliament, exclaimed so emphatically and elo- 
quently, " Opposuit Natura — I cannot remove the eternal barri- 
ers of the creation," he had really exhausted the whole argument. 
No effective representation was jDOssible. If it had been possible, 
England herself would have been aghast at it. The very idea 
of James Otis and Patrick Henry and the Adamses arguing the 
great questions of human rights and popular liberty on the floor 
of the House of Commons, and in the hearing of the common 
people of Great Britain, would have thrown the King and Lord 
North into convulsions of terror, and we should soon have heard 
them crying out, " These men that have turned the world upside 
down are come hitlier also." One of their own Board of Trade 
(Soame Jenyns) well said, with as much truth as humor or sar- 



39 

casm, " I liave lately seen so many specimens of the great 
powers of speech of whicli these American gentlemen are pos- 
sessed, that I should be afraid the sudden importation of so 
much eloquence at once would endanger the safety of England. 
It will be much cheaper for us to pay their Army than their 
Orators." But no effective representation was possible; and 
without it Taxation wan Tyranny, in spite of the great Diction- 
ary dogmatist and his insolent pamphlet. 

Why, even in these days of Ocean Steamers, reducing the pas- 
sage across the Atlantic from forty or fifty or sixty days to ten, 
representation in Westminster Hall is not proposed for the 
colonies which England still holds on our continent ; and it 
would be little better than a farce, if it were proposed and at- 
tempted. The Dominion of Canada, as we all know, remains as 
she is, seeking neither independence nor annexation, only be- 
cause her people prefer to be, and are proud of being, a part of 
the British empire ; and because that empire has abandoned all 
military occupation or forcible restraint upon them, and has 
adopted a system involving no collision or contention. Canada 
is now doubly a monument of the greatness and wisdom of the 
immortal Chatham. His military policy conquered it for Eng- 
land ; and his civil policy, " ruling from his urn," and supple- 
mented by that of his great son, holds it for England at this 
day; permitting it substantially to rule itself, through the 
agency of a Parliament of its own, with at this moment, as it 
happens, an able, intelligent, and accomplished Governor-Gen- 
eral, whose name and blood were not without close affinities to 
those of that marvellous statesman and orator while he lived. 

It did not require the warning of our example to bring about 
such results. It is written in the eternal constitution of things 
that no large colonies, educated to a sense of their rights and 
capable of defending them, — no English or Anglo-Saxon colo- 
nies, certainly, — can be governed by a Power three thousand 
miles across an ocean, unless they are governed to their own 
satisfaction, and held as colonies with their own consent and 
free will. An Imperial military sway may be as elastic and far- 
reaching as the magnetic wires, — it matters not whether three 
thousand or fifteen thousand miles, — over an uncivilized region 



40 

or an imenliglitened race. But who is wild enough to conceive, 
as Burke said a hundred years ago, " that tlie natives of Hindos- 
• tan and those of Virginia could be ordered in the same manner ; 
or that the Cutchery Court and the grand jury at Salem could 
be regulated on a similar plan " ? " I am convinced," said Fox, 
in 1791, in the fresh light of the experience America had afforded 
him, " that the only method of retaining distant Colonies with 
advantage is to enable them to govern themselves." 

Yes, from tlie hour when Columbus and his compeers discov- 
ered our continent, its ultimate political destiny was fixed. At 
the very gateway of the Pantheon of American Liberty and 
American Independence might well be seen a triple monument, 
like that to the old inventors of printing at Frankfort, including 
Columbus and Americus Vespucius and Cabot. They were the 
pioneers in the marcli to Independence. They were the pre- 
cursors in the only progress of freedom whicli was to have no 
backward steps. Liberty had struggled long and bravely in 
other ages and in other lands. It had made glorious manifesta- 
tions of its power and promise in Athens and in Rome ; in the 
mediaeval republics of Italy ; on the plains of Germany ; along 
the dykes of Holland; among the icy fastnesses of Switz- 
erland ; and, more securely and hopefully still, in the sea-girt 
isle of Old England. But it was the glory of those heroic old 
navigators to reveal a standing-place for it at last, where its 
lever could find a secure fulcrum, and rest safely until it had 
moved the world ! The fulness of time had now come. Under 
an impulse of religious conviction, the poor, persecuted Pil- 
grims launclied out upon the stormy deep in a single, leaking, 
almost foundering bark ; and in the very cabin of the " May- 
flower " the first written compact of self-government in the 
history of mankind is prepared and signed. Ten years 
afterwards the Massachusetts Company come over with their 
Charter, and administer it on the avowed principle that the 
whole government, civil and religious, is transferred. All the 
rest which is to follow until the 4th of July, 1776, is only mat- 
ter of time and opportunity. Certainly, my friends, as we look 
back to-day through the long vista of the past, we perceive that 
it was no mere Declaration of men, which primarily brought 



♦ 41 

about the Independence we celebrate. We cannot but rever- 
ently recognize the hand of that Almighty Maker of the 
World, who " founded it upon the seas and established it upon 
the floods." We cannot but feel the full force and felicity of 
those opening words, in which the Declaration speaks of our 
assuming among the powers of the earth, " that separate and 
equal station to which the laws of Nature and of Nature's God 
entitled us." 

I spoke, Mr. Mayor, at the outset of this Oration, of "A 
Century of Self-Government Completed." And so, in some 
sort, it is. The Declaration at Philadelphia was, in itself, both 
an assertion and an act of self-government ; and it had been 
preceded, or was innnediately followed, by provisions for local 
self-government in all the separate Colonies ; — Massachusetts, 
New Hampshire, and South Carolina, conditionally, at least, hav- 
ing led the way. But we may not forget that six or seven years 
of hard lighting are still to intervene before our Independence 
is to be acknowledged by Great Britain ; and six or seven years 
more before the full consummation will have been reached by 
the adoption of the Federal Constitution, and the organization 
of our National System under the august and transcendent 
Presidency of Washington. 

With that august and transcendent Presidency, dating, — 
as it is pleasant to remember, — precisely a hundred years from 
the analogous accession of William of Orange to the throne 
of England, our history as an organized Nation fairly begins. 
When that Centennial Anniversary shall arrive, thirteen years 
hence, the time may have come for a full review of our National 
career and character, and for a complete computation or a just 
estimate of what a Century of Self-Government has accom- 
plished for ourselves and for mankind. 

I dared not attempt such a review to-day. This Anniversary 
has seemed to me to belong peculiarly, — I had almost said, 
sacredly, — to the men and the events which rendered the- 
Fourth of July so memorable for ever ; and I have wiUingly left 
myself little time for any thing else. God grant, that, when 
the 30th of April, 1889, shall dawn upon those of us who may 

G 



42 

live to see it, the thick clouds which now darken our political 
sky may have passed away ; that wholesome and healing coun- 
sels may have prevailed throughout our land ; that integrity 
and purity may be once more conspicuous in our high places ; 
that an honest currency may have been reestablished, and pros- 
perity restored to all branches of our domestic industry and our 
foreign commerce ; and that some of those social problems which 
are j^erplexing and tormenting so many of our Southern States 
may have been safely and satisfactorily solved ! 

For, indeed, Fellow Citizens, we cannot shut our eyes to the 
fact, that this great year of our Lord and of American Liberty 
has been ushered in by iiot a few discouraging and depressing 
circumstances. Appalling catastrophes, appalling crimes, have 
marked its course. -Financial, political, moral, delinquencies and 
wrongs have swept over our land like an Arctic or an Antarctic 
wave, or both conjoined ; until we have been almost ready to 
cry out in anguish to Heaven, " Tliou hast multiplied the na- 
tion, but not increased the joy ! " It will be an added stigma, 
in all time to come, on the corruption of the liour, and on all 
concerned in it, that it has cast so deep a shade over our Cen- 
tennial Festival. 

All tliis, however, we are persuaded, is temporar}^ and excep- 
tional, — the result, not of our institutions, but of disturbing 
causes ; and as distinctly traceable to those causes, as the 
scoriae of a volcano, or the debris of a deluge. Had there been 
no long and demoralizing Civil War to account for such devel- 
opments, Ave might indeed be alarmed for our future. As it is, 
our confidence in the Republic is unsliaken. We are ready even 
to accept all that has occurred to overshadow our jubilee, as a 
seasonal)le warning against vain-glorious boastings ; as a timely 
admonition that our institutions are not proof against licentious- 
ness and profligacy, but that " eternal vigilance is still the price 
of liberty." 

Already the reaction has commenced. Already the people 
are everywhere roused to the importance of something higher 
than mere partisan activity and zeal, and to a sense that some- 
thing besides " big wars " may be required to " make ambition 
virtue." Everywhere the idea is scouted that there are any 



43 

immunities or impunities for bribery and corruption ; and the 
scorn of the whole people is deservedly cast on any one 
detected in plucking our Eagle's wings to feather his own 
nest. Everj-wdiere there is a demand for integrity, for princi- 
ple, for character, as the only safe qualifications for public em- 
ployments, as well as for private trusts. Oh, let that demand 
be enforced and insisted on, — as I hope and believe it will 
be, — and we shall have nothing to fear for our freedom, and 
but little to regret in the temporary depression and mortification 
which have recalled us to a deeper sense of our dangers and 
our duties. 

]\Ieantime, we may be more than content that no short-com- 
ings or failures of our own day can diminish the glories of the 
past, or dim the brilliancy of successes achieved by our Fathers. 
We can look back upon our history so far, and find in it enough 
to make us grateful ; enough to make us hopefid ; enough to 
make us proud of our institutions and of our country ; enough 
to make us resolve never to despair of the Repul)lic ; enough to 
assure us that, could our Fathers look down on all which has 
been accomplished, they would feel that their toils and sacrifices 
had not been in vain ; enough to convince other nations, and 
the world at large, that, in uniting so generously with us to 
decorate our grand Exposition, and celebrate our Centennial 
Birthday, they are swelling the triumphs of a People and a 
Power which have left no doubtful impress upon the hundred 
years of their Independent National existence. 

Those hundred years have been crowded, as we all know, 
with wonderful changes in all quarters of the globe. I would, 
not disparage or depreciate the interest and importance of 
the great events and great reforms which have been witnessed 
during their progress, and especially near their end, in almost 
every countr}' of the Old World. Nor would I presume to claim 
too confidently for the closing Centurj^ that when the records 
of mankind are made up, in some far-distant future, it will be 
remembered and designated, peculiarly and preeminently, as 
The American Age. Yet it may well be doubted, whether the 
dispassionate historian of after years will find that the influ- 
ences of any other nation have been of farther reach and wider 



44 

range, or of more efficiency for the welfare of the world, than 
those of our great Republic, since it had a name and a place on 
the earth. 

Other Ages have had their designations, local or personal or 
mythical, — historic or pre-historic ; — Ages of stone or-iron, of 
silver or gold ; Ages of Kings or Queens, of Reformers or of 
Conquerors. That marvellous compound of almost every thing 
wise or foolish, noble or base, witty or ridiculous, sublime or 
profane, — Voltaire, — maintained that, in his day, no man of 
reflection or of taste could count more than four authentic Ages 
in the histor}- of the Avorld : 1. That of Philip and Alexander, 
with Pericles and Demosthenes, Aristotle and Plato, Apelles, 
Phidias and Praxiteles : 2. That of Csesar and Augustus, with 
Lucretius and Cicero and Livy, Virgil and Horace, Varro and 
Vitruvius: 3. That of the Medici, with Michel Angelo and 
Raphael, Galileo and Dante : 4. That which he was at the 
moment engaged in depicting, — the Age of Louis XIV, which, 
in his judgment, surpassed all the others ! 

Our American Age could bear no comparison with Ages like 
these, — measured only by the brilliancy of historians and 
philosophers, of poets or painters. We need not, indeed, be 
ashamed of what has been done for Literature and Science and 
Art, during these hundred years, nor hesitate to point with 
pride to our own authors and artists, living and dead. But the 
day has gone by when Literature and the Fine Arts, or even 
Science and the Useful Arts, can characterize an Age. There are 
other and higher measures of comparison. And the very nation 
which counts Voltaire among its greatest celebrities, — the nation 
which aided us so generously in our Revolutionary struggle, 
and Avhich is now rejoicing in its own successful establishment 
of republican institutions, — the land of the great and good 
Lafayette, — has taken the lead in pointing out the true grounds 
on which orn- American Age may challenge and claim a special 
recognition. An association of Frenchmen, under the lead of 
some of their most distinguished statesmen and scholars, -^ has 
})roposed to erect, and is engaged in erecting, as their contribu- 
tion to our Centennial, a gigantic statue at the very throat of 
the harbor of our supreme commercial emporium, which shall 



45 

symbolize the legend inscribed on its pedestal, — "Liberty 
enlightening the World! " 

That glorious legend presents the standard by whicli our Age 
is to be judged ; and by which we may well be willing and 
l)roud to iiave it judged. All else in our own career, certaiidy, 
is secondary. The growth and grandeur of our territorial 
dimensions ; the multiplication of our States ; the number and 
size and wealth of our cities ; tlie marvellous increase of our 
population ; the measureless extent of our railways and internal 
navigation ; our overflowing granaries ; our inexhaustible mines ; 
our countless inventions and multitudinous industries, — all 
these may be remitted to the Census, and left for the students 
of statistics. The claim which our country presents, for giving 
no second oi' subordinate character to tlie Age which has just 
closed, rests only on what has been accom[)lished, at home and 
abroad, for elevating the condition of mankind ; for advancing 
political and human freedom; for promoting the greatest good 
of the greatest numl)er ; for proving the capacity of man for 
self-government; and for "enlightening the world" by the 
example of a rational, regulated, enduring. Constitutional Lib- 
erty. And w])o will dispute or question that claim ? Li what 
region of the earth ever so remote from us, in what coi'uer 
of creation ever so far out of the range of our communication, 
does not some burden lightened, some bond loosened, some 
yoke lifted, some labor better remunerated, some new hope for 
despairing hearts, some new light or new liberty for tlie be- 
nighted or the op]-)ressed, bear witness this day, and trace itself 
directly or indirectly back, to tlie impulse given to tlie world by 
the successful establishment and operation of Free Institutions 
on this American Continent! 

How many Colonies have l)een more wisely and humanely and 
liberally administered, under the warning of our Revolution ! 
How many Churches have aliated something of their old intoler- 
ance and bigotry, under the encouragement of our religious 
freedom! Who believes or imagines that Free Schools, a Free 
Press, the Elective Franchise, the Rights of Representation, the 
principles of Constitutional Government, would have made the 
notable progress they have made, had our example been want- 



46 

ing ! Wlio believes or imagines that even the Rotten Boroughs 
of Old England would have disappeared so rapidly, had there 
been no American Representative Republic! And has there 
been a more effective influence on human welfare and human 
freedom, since the w^orld began, than that which has resulted 
from the existence of a great land of Libert}^ in this Western 
liemis2)here, of unl)onnded resources, with acres enough for a 
myriad of homes, and with a welcome for all who may fly to it 
from oppression, from every region beneath the sun ? 

Let not our example be perverted or dishonored, by others or 
l)y ourselves. It was no wild breaking away from all authority, 
which we celebrate to-day. It was no mad revolt against every 
thing like government. No incendiary torch can be rightfully 
kindled at our flame. Doubtless, there had been excesses and 
violences in many quarters of our land, — irrepressible outbreaks 
under unbearable provocations, — "irregular things, done in 
the confusion of mighty troubles." Doubtless, onr Boston 
mobs did not always move "to the Dorian mood of flutes and 
soft recorders." But in all our deliberative assemblies, in all 
our Town Meetings, in all our Pi'ovincial and Continental Con- 
gresses, there was a respect for the great principles of Law and 
Order ; and the definition of true civil liberty, which had been 
so remarkably laid down by one of the founders of our Common- 
wealth, more than a century before, was, consciousl}^ or uncon- 
sciously, recognized, — "a Liberty for that only which is good, 
just, and honest." 

The Declaration \ve commemorate expressly admitted and 
asserted that " governments long established should not be 
changed for light and transient causes." It dictated no special 
forms of government for otlier people, and hardl}^ for ourselves. 
It had no denunciations, or even disparagements, for monarchies 
or for empires, but eagerly contemplated, as we do at this hour, 
alliances and friendly relations with both. We have welcomed 
to our Jubilee, with peculiar interest and gratification, the rep- 
resentatives of the nations of Europe, — all then monarchical, — 
to whom we were so deeply indebted for sympathy and for 
assistance in our struggle for Independence. We have wel- 
comed, too, the personal presence of an Emperor, from another 



47 

quarter of our own hemisphere, of whose eager and enhghtened 
interest in Education and Literature and Science we had learned 
so much from our hunented Agassiz, and have now witnessed 
so much for ourselves. 

Our Fathers were no propagandists of republican institutions 
in the abstract. Their own adoption of a republican form was, 
at tlie moment, almost as much a matter of chance as of choice, 
of necessity as of preference. Tlie Thirteen Colonies had, 
happily, been too long accustomed to manage their own affairs, 
and were too wisely jealous of each other, also, to admit for an 
instant any idea of centralization ; and without centralization a 
monarchy, or any other form of arbitrary government, was out 
of the question. Union was then, as it is now, the only safety 
for liberty; but it could be only a Constitutional Union, a 
limited and restricted Union, founded on compromises and 
mutual concessions; a Union recognizing a large measure of 
State rights, — resting not only on the division of powers among 
legislative and executive departments, but resting also on the 
distribution of powers between the States and the Nation, both 
deriving their original authority from the pecfple, and exercising 
that authority for the people. This was the system contem- 
plated by the Declaration of 1776. This was the system 
approximated to by the Confederation of 1778-81. This was 
the system finally consummated by the Constitution of 1789. 
And under this system our great example of self-government 
has been held up before the nations, fulfilling, so far as it has 
fulfilled it, that lofty mission which is recognized to-day, as 
"Liberty enlightening the World!" 

Let me not speak of that example in any vain-glorious spirit. 
Let me not seem to arrogate for my country any tiling of supe- 
rior wisdom or virtue. Who will pretend that we have always 
made the most of our independence, or the best of our liberty? 
Who will maintain that we have always exlubited the brightest 
side of our institutions, or always entrusted their administra- 
tion to the wisest or worthiest men ? Who will deny that we 
have sometimes taught the world what to avoid, as well as what 
to imitate ; and that the cause of freedom and reform has some- 
times been discouraged and put back by our short-comings, or 



48 

bvour excesses? Our Lifrlit liiis been, at best, but a Revolvmo- 
Light ; -warning by its darker intervals or its sombre shades, as 
■well as cheering bv its flashes of brilliancy, or by the clear lustre 
of its steadier shining. Yet. in spite of all its imperfections 
and irregularities, to no other earthly light have so many eyes 
been turned ; from no other earthly illumination have so many 
hearts drawn hope and courage. It has breasted the tides of 
sectional and of party strife. It has stood the shock of foreign 
and of civil war. It -^-ill still hold on. erect and unextin- 
guished, defying "the returning wave" of demoralization and 
corruption. Millions of young hearts, in all quarters of our 
land, are awaking at this moment to the responsibility which 
rests peculiarly, upon them, for rendering its radiance purer and 
brighter and more constant. Millions of young hearts are re- 
solving, at this hour, that it shall not be their fault if it do not 
stand for a century to come, as it has stood for a century past, 
a Beacon of Liberty to mankind I Their little flags of hope and 
promise are floating to-day from every cottage window along the 
roadside. "With those young hearts it is safe. 

Meantime, we mf\y all rejoice and take courage, as we remem- 
ber of how great a drawback and obstruction our examj^le has 
been disembarrassed and relieved within a few years past. Cer- 
tainly, we cannot forget this day, in looking back over the ceu- 
tmy which is gone, how long that example was overshadowed, in 
the eyes of all men, by the existence of African Slavery in so con- 
siderable a portion of our country. Never, never, however, — it 
may be safely said, — was there a more tremendous, a more dread- 
ful, problem submitted to a nation for solution, than that which 
this institution involved for the United States of America. Nor 
were we alone responsible for its existence. I do not speak 
of it in the way of apology for ourselves. Still less wotdd 
I refer to it in the way of crimination or reproach towards 
others, abroad or at home. But the well-known paragraph 
on this subject, in the original draught of the Declaration, is 
quite too notable a reminiscence of the little desk before me, to 
be forgotten on such an occasion as this. That omitted clause, 
— Avhich, as Mr. Jefferson tells us, "was struck out in com- 
plaisance to South Carolina and Georgia,*' not without "tender- 



49 

ness," too, as he adds, to some " Xortliern brethren, who, though 
they had xcry few shwes themselves, had l)een pretty consider- 
able carriers of them to others," — contained the direct allega- 
tion that the King had ''prostituted his negative for suppressing 
every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable 
commerce." That memorable clause, omitted for prudential 
reasons only, has passed into history, and its truth can never be 
disputed. It recalls to us, and recalls to the world, the his- 
torical fact, — which we certainly have a special right to re- 
member this day, — that not only had African Slavery found its 
portentous and pernicious way into our Colonies in their very 
earliest settlement, but that it had been fixed and fastened upon 
some of them by Royal vetoes, prohibiting the passage of laws to 
restrain its further introduction. It had thus not only entwined 
and entangled itself about the very roots of our choicest harvests, 
— until Slavery and Cotton at last seemed as inseparaljle as the 
tares and wheat of the sacred parable, — but it had engrafted 
itself upon the very fabric of our government. We all know, 
the world knows, that our Independence could not have been 
achieved, our Union could not have been maintained, our Con- 
stitution could not have been established, without the adoption 
of those compromises which recognized its continued existence, 
and left it to the responsibility of the States of which it was 
the grievous inheritance. And from that • day forward, the 
method of dealing with it, of disposing of it, and of extinguish- 
ing it, became more and more a problem full of terrible perplex- 
ity, and seemingly incapable of human solution. 

Oh, that it could have been solved at last by some process 
less deplorable and dreadful than Civil War I How unspeakably 
glorious it would have been for us this day, could the Great 
Emancipation have been concerted, arranged, and ultimately 
effected, without violence or bloodshed, as a simple and sublime 
act of philanthropy and justice ! 

But it was not in the Divine economy that so huge an original 
wrong should be righted by any easy process. The decree 
seemed to have gone forth from the very registries of Heaven : 

'' Cuncta prius tentauJa, sed immedicabile vulnus 
Ense recidendum est." 

7 



50 

The immedicable wound must be cut away by the sword ! 
Ao-ain and a-jfain as that terrible w^ar Avent on, we niii;ht almost 
hear voices crying out, in the words of the old prophet : " O 
thou sword of the Lord, how long will it be ere thou be quiet ? 
Put up thyself into tliy scabbard ; rest, and be still ! " But the 
answering voice seemed not less audil)le : " How caii it be 
quiet, seeing the Lord hath given it a charge ? " 

And the war went on, — bravely fought on both sides, as we 
all know, — until, as one of its necessities. Slavery was abol- 
ished. It fell at last under that right of war to abolish it, 
which the late John Quincy Adams had been the first to an- 
nounce in the way of warning, more than twenty years before, in 
my own hearing, on the floor of Congress, while I was your 
Kepresentative. I remember well the burst of indignation and 
derision with which that warning was received. No prediction of 
Cassandra was ever more scorned than his, and he did not live to 
witness its verification. But whoever else may have been more 
immediately and personally instrumental in the final result, — 
the brave soldiers who fought the battles, or the gallant gen- 
erals who led them, — the devoted philanthropists, or the ardent 
statesmen, who, in season and out of season, labored for it, — 
the Martyr-President who proclaimed it, — the true story of 
Emancipation can never be fairly and fully told without the 
"old man eloquent," who died beneath the roof of the Capitol 
nearly thirty years ago, being recognized as one of the leading 
figures of the narrative. 

But, thanks be to God, who overrules every thing for good, that 
great event, the greatest of our American Age, — great enough, 
alone and by itself, to give a name and a character to any Age, — 
has been accomplished ; and, by His blessing, we present our 
country to the world this day without a slave, white or black, 
upon its soil ! Thanks be to God, not only that our beloved 
Union has been saved, but that it has been made l)Oth easier 
to save, and better worth saving, hereafter, by the final solu- 
tion of a problem, before which all human wisdom had stood 
aghast and confounded for so many generations ! Thanks be to 
God, and to Him be all the praise and the glory, Ave can read 
the great words of the Declaration, on this Centennial Anni- 



51 

versary, without reservation or evasion : " We hold these truths 
to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they 
are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights ; 
that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." 
The legend on that new colossal Pharos, at Long Island, may 
now indeed be, " J^iberty enlightening the World ! " 

We come then, to-day, Fellow Citizens, with hearts full of 
gratitude to God and man, to pass down our country and its 
institutions, — not wholly without scars and blemishes upon 
their front, — not without shadows on the past or clouds on 
the future, — but freed for ever from at least one great stain, 
and firmly rooted in the love and loyalty of a United People, 
— to the generations wliich are to succeed us. 

And what shall we say to those succeeding generations, as we 
commit the sacred trust to their keeping and guardianship ? 

If I could hope, without presumption, that any humble coun- 
sels of mine, on this hallowed Anniversary, could be remem- 
bered beyond the hour of their utterance, and reach the ears 
of my countrymen in future days ; if I could borrow " the mas- 
terly pen " of Jefferson, and produce words which should par- 
take of the immortality of those which "he wrote on this little 
desk ; if I could command the matchless tongue of John 
Adams, when he poured out appeals and arguments which 
moved men from their seats, and settled the destinies of a 
Nation ; if I could catch but a single spark of those electric 
fires which Franklin wrested from the skies, and flash down a 
pln-ase, a word, a thouglit, along the magic chords which stretch 
across the ocean of tlie future, — what could I, what would I,' 
say ? 

I could not omit, certainly, to reiterate the solemn obligations 
which rest on every citizen of this Republic to cherish and en- 
force the great j)riniciples of our Colonial and Revolutionary 
Fathers, — the principles of Liberty and Law, one and in- 
separable, — the principles of the Constitution and the Union. 

I could not omit to ui'ge on every man to remember that self- 
government politically can only be successful, if it be accom- 
panied by self-government personally ; that there must be 



62 

government somewhere ; and that, if the people are indeed to 
be sovereigns, tliey must exercise their sovereignty over them- 
selves individually, as well as over themselves in the aggregate, 
— regulating their own lives, resisting their own temptations, 
subduing tlieir own passions, and voluntarily imposing upon 
themselves some measure of tliat restraint and discipline, which, 
under other systems, is supplied from the armories of arbitrary 
power, — the discipline of virtue, in the place of the discipline 
of slavery. 

I could not omit to caution them against the corrupting 
inlluences of intemperance, extravagance, and luxur3^ I could 
not omit to warn them against political intrigue, as well as against 
personal licentiousness ; and to implore them to regard principle 
and character, rather than mere party allegiance, in the choice 
of men to rule over them. 

I could not omit to call upon them to foster and further the 
cause of universal Education ; to give a liberal support to our 
Schools and Colleges ; to promote the advancement of Science 
and of Art, in all their multiplied divisions and relations ; and 
to encourage and sustain all those noble institutions of Charit}^ 
which, in our own land above all others, have given the 
crowning -grace and glory to modern civilization. 

I could not refrain from pressing upon them a just and gener- 
ous consideration for the interests and the rights of their fellow 
men everywhere, and an earnest effort to j^romote Peace and 
Good Will among the Nations of the earth. 

I could not refrain from reminding them of the shame, the 
unspeakable shame and ignominy, which would attach to those 
who should show themselves unable to uphold the glorious 
Fabric of Self-Government which had been founded for them 
at such a cost by their Fathers: — " Videfe, videtc, ne, ut illls 
^ndclwrrlinum fuit tantam vobls imperii gloriam 7'eli7iquere, sic 
vohis turpissimum sit, illud quod accepistis, tueri et conservare 
non posse .' " 

And surely, most surely, I could not fail to invoke them to 
imitate and emulate the examples of virtue and j^urity and 
patriotism, which the great founders of our Colonies and of our 
Nation had so abundantly left them. 



53 

But could I stop there? Could I hold out to them, as the 
results of a long life of observation and experience, nothing but 
the principles and examples of great men ? 

Who and what are great men? " Woe to the country," said 
IMctternich to our own Ticknor, forty years ago, " whose con- 
dition and institutions no longer produce great men to manage 
its affairs." The wily Austrian applied his remark to England 
at that day ; but his woe — if it be a woe — would have a wider 
range in our time, and leave hardly any land unreached. Cer- 
tainly we hear it now-a-days, at every turn, that never before 
has there been so striking a disproportion between supply and 
demand, as at this moment, the world over, in the commodity 
of great men. 

But who, and what, are great men ? " And now stand 
forth," says an eminent Swiss historian, who had completed 
a survey of the whole history of mankind, at the very moment 
when, as he says, "a blaze of freedom is just bursting forth 
beyond the ocean," — "And now stand forth, ye gigantic 
forms, shades of the first Chieftains, and Sons of Gods, who 
glimmer among the rocky halls and monntain fortresses of 
the ancient world ; and you, Conquerors of the world from 
Babylon and from Macedonia ; ye Dj'uasties of Ctesars, of 
Huns, Arabs, Moguls, and Tartars ; ye Commanders of the 
Faithful on the Tigris, and Commanders of the Faithful on 
the Tiber ; you hoary Counsellors of Kings, and Peers of Sover- 
eigns ; Warriors on the car of triumph, covered with scars, and 
crowned with laurels ; ye long rows of Consuls and Dictators, 
famed for your lofty minds, your unshaken constancy, your 
ungovernable spirit; — stand forth, and let us survey for a 
while your assembly, like a Council of the Gods ! What were 
ye ? The first among mortals ? Seldom can you claim that 
title! The best of men? Still fewer of you have deserved 
such praise ! Were ye the compellers, the instigators of the 
human race, the prime movers of all their works? Rather let 
us say that you were the instruments, that you were the wheels, 
by wdiose means the Invisible Being has conducted the incom- 
prehensible fabric of universal government across the ocean 
of time ! " 



54 

Instruments and wheels of the Invisible Governor of the 
Universe ! This is indeed all which the greatest of men ever 
have been, or ever can be, Xo flatteries of courtiers ; no 
adulations of the multitude ; no audacity of self-reliance ; no 
intoxications of success : no evolutions or developments of sci- 
ence, — can make more or other of them. This is " the sea-mark 
of their utmost sail," — the goal of their farthest run, — the 
very round and top of their highest soaring. 

Oh, if there could be, to-day, a deeper and more pervading 
impression of this great truth throughout our land, and a more 
prevailing conformity of our thoughts and words and acts to 
the lessons which it involves. — if we could lift ourselves to a 
loftier sense of our relations to the In^nsible, — if, in surveying 
our past history, we could catch larger and more exalted views 
of our destinies and our responsibilities, — if we could realize 
that the want of good men may be a heavier woe to a land 
than any want of what the world calls great men, — our 
Centennial Year would not only be signalized by splendid 
ceremonials and magnificent commemorations and gorgeous 
expositions, but it would go far towards fulfilling something of 
the grandeur of that " Acceptable Year '* which was announced 
by higher than human lips, and would be the auspicious promise 
and pledge of a glorious second century of Independence and 
Freedom for our country ! 

For, if that second century of self-government is to go on 
safely to its close, or is to go on safely and prosperously at all, 
there must be some renewal of that old spirit of subordination 
and obedience to Divine, as well as human, LaAvs, which has 
been our security in the past. There must be faith in some- 
thing higher and better than ourselves. There must be a 
reverent acknowledgment of an Unseen, but All-seeing, All- 
controlling Ruler of the Universe. His Word, His Day, His 
House, His Worship, must be sacred to our children, as they 
have been to their fathers : and His blessing must never fail to 
be invoked upon our land and ujdou our liberties. The patriot 
voice, which cried from the balcony of yonder Old State House, 
when the Declaration had been originally proclaimed, " Stability 
and perpetuity to American Independence," did not fail to add, 



'' God save our American States." I would prolong that 
ancestral prayer. And the last phrase to pass my lips at this 
hour, and to take its chance for remembrance or oblivion in 
years to come, as the conclusion of this Centennial Oration, 
and the sum, and summing .up, of all I can say to the present 
or the future, shall be: — There is, there can be, no Indepen- 
dence of God : In Him, as a Xation, no less than in Him, as 
individuals, " we live, and move, and have our being ! "' God 
SAVE ouE American' States ! 



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